These new JEDD districts offered cities and towns a chance to form partnerships rather than battling it out over contentious annexation.  The JEDDs give a little something to both sides – townships get to share in income tax which they have no statutory authority otherwise to collect and cities can grow their boundaries and expand their tax base. 

Kent has formed JEDDs with both Franklin and Brimfield Townships, and we even have a joint-joint-joint district between Brimfield, Kent and Tallmadge around the SR43 Interchange on 76.  

 These JEDDs have provided some much needed revenues to cash strapped townships, and the cities have welcomed their share of the new tax revenues as well.  The JEDD agreements typically involve some sharing of income taxes (e.g., 45% or 50% split) in the areas designated as falling within the JEDD boundaries.  

In total, the Kent Franklin JEDD has collected over $1.6 million in income tax receipts – $889,000 to Kent and $727,000 to Franklin Township.  That works out to be about $250,000 or so to Kent per year at the current JEDD tax rate which according to the terms of the agreement is set to double next year.

There is also a certain amount set aside off the top to to be dedicated to new projects within the JEDD areas.  A good example of that kind of project would be the new sidewalk that you can see being built along SR 59 in the Franklin Township.

A couple of years ago in one of our JEDD meetings we talked about the need to have sidewalk in this corridor that has a lot of pedestrians that too often end up walking at their own risk along the edge of a busy section of roadway. 

From that first conversation, we proceeded to commit some JEDD funds to partner with Portage County to develop the preliminary engineering that would be needed to go after regional grant funds ($165,000). 

It all came together and now we have new sidewalk being built in a much needed shared section of street between the township and the City.   

Photo from Record Courier News Article

 It’s a great example of a project that probably would never have been able to funded without the seed money from the JEDD.  

More proof that success in this current economy comes down to how good a partner you can be.  We’re proud to be partners with our neighboring townships.

But there’s more to your City government than economic development.  City services still provide a much needed safety net — both in terms of physical safety like Fire and Police, and in social programs to fill gaps that people have a hard time filling on their own. 

Despite the Federal budget issues, the good news is that the Feds still fund many of those safety net services under the umbrella of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program.  The CDBG pot is smaller than it used to be but we still use those funds to cover a lot of needs in Kent.  

Below I’ve included the 2010 CDBG program summary to give you a sense of how those funds get used to meet community needs. 

I’m sincerely grateful for all of the City employees help in holding the line (for the 6th year in a row) and keeping the City afloat. We’re trying to flex our budgets where we can, but we don’t have enough to do everything that needs to be done — much less what we’d like to do to make our services better — so we are forced to make do.

My thanks to everyone in the City that keeps pushing forward and representing the City of Kent with pride.

If numbers is your thing, you can check out some of our accounting performance here, but if not, take my word for it, our staff does a great job. 

Whether it’s the wine and cheese festival, or the grand daddy of them all, the Heritage Festival, the more people that come downtown the more the cash registers ring in the downtown stores. 

It’s that relationship that motivates City Council to continue to set aside funds in the City budget to support organizations that plan and operate special events in downtown Kent.  That support takes the form of an annual cash contribution to Main Street Kent and in grants that are made available each year for organizations that host these events to be used to defray some of the hard costs, e.g., advertising, security, clean up, associated with the events. 

Dan Smith, Kent Economic Director, has announced open season for these grants for 2011 and interested organizations have until May 20th to submit their grant request.  There’s no strings attached; just host the event, record your costs, and then complete an event evaluation form to document its impact.   The City takes care of the rest. 

Here’s the details from Dan.

To download the grant eligibility and application forms, click here. 

We discovered that prescription discount programs are popping up all over the place.  I thought that perhaps the National League of Cities had negotiated some unique deal but once we starting checking around it turned out that prescription discount cards are being offered all over the internet and in stores right here in Kent. 

The fact that the National League of Cities is a respected industry association lends credibility to their program but we were surprised to see that the types of discounts on common pharmaceutical offered in their program is comparable to discounts found in a number of free on-line discounters. 

The discount cards are not a health insurance card but if you’re paying cash out of pocket for prescriptions you should definitely look into them, they can probably save you some money.   The City’s HR Manager says that generally these cards can be used if you are uninsured, or your prescription is not covered by your plan so she recommends asking your pharmacy or searching discount prescription cards on line to see what’s available.  Many of the cards can be applied for on line and printed right off your computer.  

A couple of years ago City Council chose to not renew the City’s membership in the National League of Cities (NLC) as a cost cutting measure (especially since we belong to other professional associations with similar purposes) which means in order to jump on-board the NLC program we’d have to re-join the organization at a cost of $1,500. 

When we reported this back to City Council, they suggested that given the wide array of free discount programs out there, perhaps the best option right now was just to help spread the word about the availability of prescription discount programs and let the residents select the one that best fits their needs.  So look around and see for yourself:  

Google Prescription Discount Cards

Make no mistake about it, Old man winter has been on a roll and we’ve been busy chasing, pushing and scooping up his snow flakes all over town.  LiveScience reports that each cubic foot of snow contains approximately 1 billion snowflakes so with 8.5 feet of snow so far this year we’re talking an unfathomable number of flakes. 

Given those numbers, the cost of snow operations on a per snowflake basis probably isn’t too bad but if we look at it on a per inch basis, it can start adding up pretty quick.  The bulk of the costs are in the labor (running around the clock for days at a time is never cheap) and materials (mainly salt with truck fuel thrown in the mix too).  

In 2009, the Public Service Director reports that he spent $317,919 to handle 62″ of snow — that works out to about $5,127 per inch. 

The bad news is that we’ve already had 102″ of snow this year, but thanks to some mechanical innovations in the snow operations this year (mainly increased use of steel blades which requires less salt application) the crews have spent $317,852 for 102″ which works out to $3,110 per inch. 

From a productivity perspective that’s nearly a 40% improvement which has saved an estimated $200,000. 

Steel plow blades are rough on snow which means we get back to pavement quicker without as much salt application, but they can also be rough on the surface of the street too so we’ll be monitoring the impacts this change has on our street repair budget to make sure we’re not just moving one cost to another cost center in our budget.  So far we’re way ahead and we plan to stay that way.

Of course, a little help from Old Man Winter would go a long ways. 

Over the last two decades we’ve consistently invested in new technology in the area of meter reading because meter reading has a well deserved reputation for being a labor hog.  Water line breaks can be labor hogs too, but they bring direct value to the customer so we consider that time well spent. 

As you might imagine it can take a long time to physically walk the City reading water meters on a house by house basis so we’ve tried to stay current on technology advances.  You can’t run a water system without meter reading but the time it takes to read the meters doesn’t have any inherent customer value so we consider less as much more. 

That’s why we’ve been transitioning the old fashioned meters to phone line meters and now to radio meters.  With each upgrade in technology we save time, and in this case, time is money. 

Here’s a summary from Gene Roberts that he scripted to answer a resident’s questions about the status of water meter reading in Kent.  Gene starts with a reference to the budget that has been set up to buy more modern meter reading technology.  As you can see there is nothing cheap about upgrading the meter technology which is why we’ve been spreading it out over many years.

__________________

The 1995 Budget reported:

In 2009 a concerted effort started to upgrade the current inventory of manual read water meters to radio read meters. This process does not require removal of the meter if it is found to have been replaced in 1995 or is determined to be defective or reading an incorrect volume of water. The process does require removal of the current backflow meter read heads and replacement with an updated head which is radio compatible and installation of the radio transmitters. Once fully deployed the radio read system will require one staff one day to read all meters in the City which equates to again gaining one additional employee to start to decrease the back log of work in the Central Maintenance Division.

The cost for the conversion from phone read to radio read is the cost of the meter head, the radio transmitter and staff time to convert totaling less than $100 per location on average. For the approximate 800 customers remaining on the phone read system this equates to $80,000 of which the City has received a NOPEC grant for $73,162 to offset the cost of the remaining phone read meters replacement. The cost of the phones read systems that have been previously replaced have been spread out in the budget from year 2001 through 2008 by using maintenance funds and additional funds provided of approximately $65,000 per year for 2009 through 2011. The total cost estimated to complete the radio read conversion for all users is $660,000 spread out over 10-years at an average of $66,000 per year.

The news agencies are saying that we are on a record setting pace for snowfall in December, and I’m guessing that the chiropractic business is booming from all the back bending shoveling that’s been going on.  What’s true for resident’s and their driveways is equally true for City crews and City streets.

The City’s snow operations have had to put the pedal to the metal to keep up with everything that mom nature threw at us over the last couple of weeks.  The good news is we have a snow operations plan, we worked the plan, and the plan worked.  That’s not to say everything we did was perfect — we can always do better – but at the end of the day I look back on what we accomplished and I’m proud of how we managed the operations given all the snow we got.

Snow removal doesn’t just happen, it actually takes a lot of careful planning, preparation and performance to pull it off.  We have experienced supervisors and operators who know the drill and that has really helped us do a better job of anticipating problem spots and staying out in front of trouble.  Snow removal isn’t something you want to fall behind because catching up is usually twice as expensive and unbelievably labor intensive. 

The strategy is to hit the streets hard as early as possible and don’t let up until mother nature blinks and takes a break.  I’ve lived through snow operations that fell behind and there’s nothing more painful than watching City crews use jack hammers and ice picks to try to break up the ice jams that formed at intersections.  At that point your best bet is to move south. 

I realize that snow operations seems fairly simple — start truck, lower plow blade, drive truck, and engage the salt spreader — but there’s actually a lot more than meets the eye to running an effective snow operation.  Every decision the operator makes in the course of his/her shift has direct consequences, both for public safety and for costs.  A good operator knows the nuances of how each truck handles, how to gauge effective blade height, when to throw salt and how to angle the plow blade for maximum effect (for both clearing the street and minimizing barricading intersections and driveways as much as possible).  

To give you a sense of the management of the snow operations, I thought I’d share the most recent snow operations statistical report produced by the snow operations managers; it gives a flavor of the types of variables that are involved in managing a response to potentially dangerous weather events.  As you can see below, it turns out this year our costs are averaging about $3,000 per inch of snow — at that rate you can imagine how quickly costs can add up if we don’t manage the operations right.